Product optimization in a highly optimized world

Vlad Ciurca — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 10:24:29 +0000

Nowadays we seem to be surrounded by success stories of great companies with great products that have transformed the way we live our lives or at least some little parts of them. But for every step of these success stories, there lie a lot of unsuccessful attempts in satisfying the target audience’s needs or expectations, or even unsuccessful stories of promiscuous products that haven’t seen the light of the day.

So where do we actually stand if we try to launch a new product, regarding the steps needed to be taken towards success in the long term? We looked back at some of Techsylvania’s talks on product optimization in order to identify some of the necessary actions in the story of product success.

Jeremy Fisher (River) — How to Slay a Dragon

Jeremy Fisher engaged us in different imagination exercises reported to contemporary use-cases. More specifically, he analyzed different product stories reported to their direct competitors, which were the big tech giants at the moment.

How do you succeed if you want to go against the dragons (the leading companies)? Well, Jeremy stated the obvious answer: build a better product and other alternatives which he has found to be effective.

“Products didn’t start with all their features. They progressed and adapted in time, improving with every version.”

Based on this premise, Jeremy presented three methods through which a company can capitalize:

The zoom-in = zoom in on a single and best feature of your direct competitor and try to do that in the best way possible
The twist = figure out a new core use case that isn’t being served by that existing product (the direct competitor) and reorient the whole strategy around the new core use case
The missing link — a missing opportunity that the dragons haven’t already seen

Akis Evangelidis, one of the biggest marketing professionals in Europe, who has spearheaded the entry of OnePlus into the European market has also joined us at Techsylvania and shared their secrets into launching a successful product.

Starting from a simple premise — to create a better user experience, One Plus entered the market five years ago, promising its users a premium Android smartphone. Five years later, One Plus is in the top 5 premium smartphone manufacturers (source), and according to Akis, listening to their public is what differentiates them mostly.

Akis has also 3 parameters when it comes to a company’s success, but on his recipe, all of them must be taken into consideration:

User relationship creates brand value
The end goal is the product
Seek continuous reflection and improvement

“The role of the engineer is to automate things, to make it simple.”

Shifting over to the technical side of taking care of a product’s success, we had Paul Cutter from Paddy Power Betfair telling us all about their struggles as technical teams and how they managed to raise the company to such achievements.

After building a great team and instilling in them a great company vision, they reached the conclusion that in order to reach the kind of structure they needed, and at a fast pace, they had to get from monolithic to architecture. Find out all about their technical struggles in Paul’s story

One valuable lesson that stuck to our minds from his talk was that if people have ownership on a project they’ll care more and they’ll go that extra mile.

So what are our conclusions when it comes to a product’s success and product optimization? Find your product-market fit, find your right team players and the technology that suits you best.

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Product optimization in a highly optimized world